I tracked Jeremy down in the weight room that evening. It was late enough that we had the room to ourselves. Not a lot of people like to spend Friday night in a windowless, concrete-walled basement room in glamorous Strathmore Academy.
“What are you doing here?” Jeremy said.
“I’m fifteen, nothing better to do,” I said, adjusting the leg press to two hundred pounds, a little more than I usually pressed. Jeremy might not have been the one choosing the team, but he was still a Shark. “What’s your excuse?”
Jeremy had a car, even if it was a clunker compared to the sixteenth-birthday BMWs that littered Strathmore’s parking lot. He had options.
He finished his set before answering. He was doing pull-downs, working on his arms. “Not in the mood to go out, I guess,” he said.
I let him finish another set of ten pull-downs before interrupting. “So…what’s with the warning?” It was all I could do to keep the weights from crashing down. Maybe two hundred was too much.
“We both know you’re going to make the team,” he said as his pulley slid up and down. “Just skip the party, all right? Make an excuse.”
I pushed out again. My leg muscles shook as the weights rose into the air. “You can’t” —breathe—“just”—breathe—“say that.” I let the weight down, slowly. “You have to explain.”
The party was going to be at Steven’s friend Nate’s house. Rumor had it Nate’s parents were away and the place was well stocked. Some girls from our sister school, Wallingford, were going to be there too. Wallingford was an all-girls boarding school, like Strathmore was for boys, except the girls wore kilts.
And kneesocks.
Jeremy walked over to look at what I was lifting. “You should focus on what you’re doing,” he said. “This is too much weight for you.”
“I can handle it.” I groaned, pushing out again.
“Uh-huh,” he said. But this time, when I lowered the weight, he tugged out the key that kept the weights together.
I pushed again, and my legs flew out. The default weight was only twenty pounds. “Hey! I’m not a girl.”
He raised an eyebrow. “I dare you to say that to Abby.”
“Yeah, right,” I said. Abby would deck me, or worse. The girl carried a knife. A thumb-sized Swiss Army knife, but still.
I held out my hand. “Give me back the pin.”
“Nope.” He stuck it back in the weight rack, several weights lighter than where I’d had it. “Try that. Should be around your body weight. Work with that.”
I worked my legs, slow and steady, concentrating on my form. “Better?”
“Always listen to your elders,” he said.
I finished my set at the lower weight. “Except when the elders tell you to miss a party and won’t tell you why.”
He sighed and went over to the mats to stretch. “You ever hear of Marcus Tam?”
I shook my head.
“You would have, if he’d lived. He would have an Olympic medal in freestyle by now.”
Olympic is a big word, and Jeremy wouldn’t just throw it around. This kid must have been good. “So what happened to him?” I started another set. Jeremy had been right about the weights. It was better like this.
“Initiation party,” Jeremy said. “My first year. Things got out of hand. And instead of taking him to the hospital like they probably should have, the older guys dropped him off back here in his room to sleep it off.” He turned his back to me and started looking through the free weights. I don’t know if he was really seeing them though. He picked up the same five-pound weight three times. “He choked on his own vomit and died.”
“Oh,” I said. I’d heard of stuff like that happening, but never to anyone real, if that makes sense. I mean, of course they were real people, but they weren’t connected to anyone I knew. “Were you friends?”
Jeremy tensed. “Roommates,” he said finally. “So if I’d gone home with…”
“You can’t know that,” I said. “You can’t know what would have happened.”
He shrugged and turned to face me again. “Anyhow, it was all hushed up. Not that he died, obviously, but that it was an initiation party. The hazing and all that stuff—nobody talked about it. The stuff in the papers made it sound like he was some kind of binge drinker or something. A dumb kid let loose on his own for the first time, drinking underage. Nothing about the team, except that he happened to be a swimmer. The school took some heat and did room inspections more often for a while. And the swim team was really careful the next year. No hazing, no initiation. But last year, it started up again. And this year…let’s just say I know the pattern.”
“I’m not stupid,” I said. “And besides, you’ll be there, right? We can make sure nothing bad happens.”
He shook his head. “You don’t understand. I’m not worried about some random accident. They know we’re friends, and they said if I—”
He slammed his mouth shut as if he wanted to bite back the words.
I lowered the weight slowly. The room seemed to shrink. “If you what?”
He shook his head. “I’ll make sure nothing happens. It’s time to come clean about what happened to Marcus. I’ve talked to some of the other guys—”
The door swung open as he was speaking. It was Steven. Nate was right behind him. Jeremy’s face went white.
“Don’t let us interrupt,” Steven said.
Jeremy straightened. “We were just talking about Bram’s kick. It needs work.”
My eyebrows reached for my hairline.
Nate shrugged. “Kid hasn’t made the team yet. Worry about it when he does.”
It was like I wasn’t even in the room. “Uh, hello? Still here,” I said.
“Watch your tone, pond scum,” Steven said. “Drop and give me fifty.” He turned to Jeremy. “We need to talk. Privately.”
We weren’t at the pool. So technically, he couldn’t boss me around. But I didn’t want to get into it with him. I held his eyes until he glanced away, then I got down on the floor.
I took my time with the push-ups. All the way up and all the way down, so slowly my arms shook. If Steven wanted to talk to Jeremy privately, I wasn’t going to make it easy for him.
When I finished, Nate grinned. “Nicely done, pond scum. You made your point,” he said. “Now give us a sec, okay? Shark business.”
I stood up and looked at Jeremy. “You want me to leave?”
“It’s fine,” he said. “See you in the morning for our run?”
What run? “Uh, sure,” I said, as he jerked his head toward Nate and Steven.
“Six o’clock. Out front, by the flagpole. Don’t be late,” he said.
I waited outside the weight room. If I heard anything like a struggle, I was going back in.
Jeremy was the first one out. He frowned when he saw me standing there. “What are you doing?”
“Nothing,” I said, stung. Didn’t he realize I had waited for him?
Jeremy opened his mouth to say something, but the door opened again, letting Nate and Steven out. Nate winked at me. “Good kid.”
I’d had enough of all three of them. “You done? Can I use the room? Some of us have training to do.”
A look flickered across Jeremy’s face. It vanished too quickly for me to read it. “Remember what I told you,” he said. “Less weight. It might make a difference.”
I headed inside and made a few attempts to get started, but my head wasn’t in it.
Time to come clean. Maybe. But I was here to swim. I didn’t want to be part of anybody’s crusade. Not even for Jeremy.